Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

developer.nvidia.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 415 posts

Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

#51

Post by anthk »

messe wrote: post #8

Had to do a few doubletakes on this, but even with the recent hacks and progress on NVIDIA releasing Tegra source code, I didn't expect this for another few years. Holy shit. It's even licensed as MIT. Even OpenBSD could conceivably port this with enough manpower. Adding enough just emulation for the userspace driver would be a lot easier than maintaining a complete linux emulator. This is one of the biggest things t…

If the module can use MESA, good. If not, meh.

>. Adding enough just emulation for the userspace driver would be a lot easier than maintaining a complete linux emulator.

OpenBSD it's the best BSD on support for free (Intel) and semi free drivers such as the ones from AMD, they already adapted all the src from Linux, KMS included.

Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

#53

Post by mjg59 »

1) This is unambiguously Good News

2) This is not upstreamable in its current form (nvidia admit this in their press release)

3) In an ideal world, nouveau (the open source driver for nvidia hardware) would be able to target this kernel code. Right now though there's no commitment for any sort of stable userland ABI, and that makes that difficult (moving to a new driver version may break interfaces that nouveau uses)

The press release does say that they have plans to figure out a more upstream friendly approach in the long term, which is great - and what has been released will undoubtedly help development of the existing nouveau codebase.

Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

#54

Post by onphonenow »

messe wrote: post #8

Had to do a few doubletakes on this, but even with the recent hacks and progress on NVIDIA releasing Tegra source code, I didn't expect this for another few years. Holy shit. It's even licensed as MIT. Even OpenBSD could conceivably port this with enough manpower. Adding enough just emulation for the userspace driver would be a lot easier than maintaining a complete linux emulator. This is one of the biggest things t…

Wow! MIT is about as clean as you can go, with no real reserved advantage to dual license etc using Affero GPLv3 or similar. Not bad.

Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

#55

Post by jjoonathan »

messe wrote: post #8

Had to do a few doubletakes on this, but even with the recent hacks and progress on NVIDIA releasing Tegra source code, I didn't expect this for another few years. Holy shit. It's even licensed as MIT. Even OpenBSD could conceivably port this with enough manpower. Adding enough just emulation for the userspace driver would be a lot easier than maintaining a complete linux emulator. This is one of the biggest things t…

That might not even be overstatement. The last few big desktop linux crash-and-burns I've run into all had display drivers as a common component.

I like back-foot, underdog NVIDIA. Ascendent AMD hasn't drawn my ire yet, let's hope power corrupts slowly.

Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

#57

Post by paisawalla »

samstave wrote: post #44
messe wrote: post #8

Had to do a few doubletakes on this, but even with the recent hacks and progress on NVIDIA releasing Tegra source code, I didn't expect this for another few years. Holy shit. It's even licensed as MIT. Even OpenBSD could conceivably port this with enough manpower. Adding enough just emulation for the userspace driver would be a lot easier than maintaining a complete linux emulator. This is one of the biggest things t…

Quoted post unavailable.

Nvidia have always shipped closed-source drivers, despite AMD and Intel providing open source drivers for their GPUs. This made the experience on Linux second class to Windows, where while also closed source, at least you knew that bugs would probably get fixed. Various non-core features simply wouldn't have support on Linux, e.g. Optimus. Also, shipping closed source binaries would limit which kernel you could run to supported versions.

Lastly, of course, this opens the way to non-Linux OSes receiving support as well.

If you just search the web for "Nvidia issues Linux" you'll see quite a few complaints. Particularly from people who have obscure configurations -- they pretty much had no chance of getting anything to work.

Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

#59

Post by anthk »

ladyanita22 wrote: post #46
messe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if that means their userspace drivers will follow soon.

No way they're releasing CUDA or Nvidia RTX code. That'll stay closed source (and I respect that)

Well, the libre GNU world world will be able to use OpenCL with even more performance.

Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules

#60

Post by anthk »

marcodiego wrote: post #48

For those who didn't use Nvidia on linux in the old times: The driver was a proprietary binary. Since a kernel module requires interfacing with the kernel API, it could be considered a derivative work and a breach of the GPL license. So, Nvidia provided a small open source shim which interfaced between the kernel and the proprietary module. You had to compile that shim yourself with the right arcane command line inca…

I remember using that for a Geforce2 MX and the installer.

People has no idea on what FREEDOM do you have if you aren't bound to crappy licenses with Nvidia and CUDA for serious computing where you can be limited per core.

Post reply on HN